"Gripping from start to finish and offers important new insights." - Library Journal

"A labor of love in which journalist Garth combines a newsman's nose for a good story with a scholar's scrupulous attention to detail... Brilliantly argued." -- Daily Mail

"Insight into how a writer turned academia into art, how deeply friendship supports and wounds us, and how the death and disillusionment that characterized World War I inspired Tolkien's lush saga." - Detroit Free Press

“To be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than in 1939 . . . by 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead.”

So J.R.R. Tolkien responded to critics who saw The Lord of the Rings as a reaction to the Second World War. Tolkien and the Great War tells for the first time the full story of how he embarked on the creation of Middle-earth in his youth as the world around him was plunged into catastrophe. This biography reveals the horror and heroism that he experienced as a signals officer in the Battle of the Somme and introduces the circle of friends who spurred his mythology into life. It shows how, after two of these brilliant young men were killed, Tolkien pursued the dream they had all shared by launching his epic of good and evil.This is the first substantially new biography of Tolkien since 1977, meticulously researched and distilled from his personal wartime papers and a multitude of other sources.John Garth argues that the foundation of tragic experience in the First World War is the key to Middle-earth's enduring power. Tolkien used his mythic imagination not to escape from reality but to reflect and transform the cataclysm of his generation. While his contemporaries surrendered to disillusionment, he kept enchantment alive, reshaping an entire literary tradition into a form that resonates to this day....more

Community Reviews

_Tolkien and the Great War_ is an obviously well-researched book that goes into explicit (at times I must admit tedious) detail on J. R. R. Tolkien’s involvement in World War I and its possible impact on his then-current and later writings. We begin by observing Tolkien’s earliest close friendships formed at St.King Edward’s Grammar School under the auspices of the “TCBS” (an acronym for Tea Club, Barrovian Society) where the core group of Tolkien, Christopher Wiseman, Robert Gilso2.5 – 3 stars

_Tolkien and the Great War_ is an obviously well-researched book that goes into explicit (at times I must admit tedious) detail on J. R. R. Tolkien’s involvement in World War I and its possible impact on his then-current and later writings. We begin by observing Tolkien’s earliest close friendships formed at St.King Edward’s Grammar School under the auspices of the “TCBS” (an acronym for Tea Club, Barrovian Society) where the core group of Tolkien, Christopher Wiseman, Robert Gilson, and G. B. Smith became close artistic confidantes, encouragers and critics of each other’s work. Convinced that they were a group that would change the world with their work, their dreams were turned to harsh reality with the advent of “the war to end all wars”.

We spend the majority of the remainder of the book following Garth as he traces the movements and vicissitudes of the various platoons to which each member of the TCBS was assigned, with a special concentration on Tolkien himself. It’s common knowledge that the Great War winnowed a generation, destroying the optimism of the Edwardian era and putting paid to facile romantic notions of the heroism of war. The ‘innovations’ of technology that made killing men easier than it ever had been before, along with the harrowing conditions of trench life and seemingly incompetent leadership, made this conflict a wake-up call for the world that shattered many illusions. As Tolkien himself noted: “By 1918, all but one of my close friends were dead.” In the midst of this carnage and despair Tolkien managed to begin work on the poems and stories that would become the germ for his masterpieces The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as well as the accompanying material that would evolve into the posthumously published The Silmarillion.

Garth does a fine job giving us details of the World War I experience, but I have to admit that in general I was a bit underwhelmed by this book. I found the prose to be a bit workmanlike, and this wasn’t helped by the sheer amount of detail. I appreciate the thoroughness of Garth’s research, but I did find my eyes glazing over a bit from time to time as troop movements, platoon names, and other details were gone into. Some of the extra biographical detail given on Tolkien was interesting, but I must admit that most of it I already knew, at least in broad strokes, from other sources so I didn’t come away feeling that I had learned anything heretofore unknown to me about the man himself. The main gist of Garth’s critical argument, namely that Tolkien, far from being an anachronistic throwback despite his literary tastes, was actually truly a man of his era who was responding uniquely to the horrors present at the birth of the twentieth century has also been covered by others, especially Tom Shippey in several of his works.

I did find the last section of the book the most interesting. In it Garth concentrates almost exclusively on the early writings Tolkien did in what would ultimately become his legendarium of Middle Earth and examines how his experiences in the war may have coloured the world he created, or even been lifted from direct experiences in his life. It is a kind of ‘biographical criticism’ for which Tolkien himself had great distaste and whose value he felt was dubious at best, but I must admit that much of what Garth posits makes sense to me, and I imagine that Tolkien’s youth, coupled with the monumental nature of the events through which he was living, could not help but leave their mark on what he wrote in ways perhaps more apparent than exists in his later, more mature writings.

In retrospect my review is probably unduly harsh. This was a fine work of biographical criticism giving great detail about a formative period of a great writer’s life. I think it was simply the fact that I wasn’t utterly wowed by the book, and found some moments slow going, that made it an interesting, though not inspiring, experience for me. ...more

This is a necessary book - worth reading not just for the inside dope on Tolkien's mythology (which frankly I'm not that interested in, but the book was compelling anyway). This book is also a thoughtful, sensitive, well-written consideration of the WWI generation, and how the pre-War world and the War itself formed Tolkien and his fellowship of four friends. It is the best kind of cultural-literary criticism, especially when Garth talks about how the accepted narrative of WWI became the pessimiThis is a necessary book - worth reading not just for the inside dope on Tolkien's mythology (which frankly I'm not that interested in, but the book was compelling anyway). This book is also a thoughtful, sensitive, well-written consideration of the WWI generation, and how the pre-War world and the War itself formed Tolkien and his fellowship of four friends. It is the best kind of cultural-literary criticism, especially when Garth talks about how the accepted narrative of WWI became the pessimistic Graves/Sassoon/Owen poetry. (Fussell does this a bit, but, as Garth correctly points out, he is clearly on the side of the pessimists.) This book also explains Tolkien's personal literary theory more clearly than any book I've read so far, including Carpenter's biography. It was easier for me to understand why Tolkien insisted LOTR was not allegory, i.e. Sauron was not Hitler/Stalin dressed up in a funny medieval hat. Also, clearly one reason Tolkien had such a problem with Lewis's Narnia series wasn't just the mixing together of Christian myths and Santa Claus, but the straight-up allegory of Aslan = Christ. Tolkien wasn't that happy about the modern literary critical technique of mapping personal experience to artwork, either, but I like to think he would have liked this dignified and respectful approach to how his own searing personal battles influenced the mythic ones he wrote out.

‘As under a green sea’: visions of war in the Dead Marshes, in The Ring Goes Ever On: Proceedings of the 2005 Tolkien Conference, ed. Sarah Wells (Tolkien Society, 2008), and (in slightly expanded form) in Myth and Magic: Art according to the Inklings, ed. Eduardo Segura and Thomas Honegger (Zürich: Walking Tree, 2007).

Frodo and the Great War, in The Lord of the Rings, 1954–2004: Scholarship in Honor of Richard E. Blackwelder, ed. Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2006). Presented at Marquette University, 2004. Revised version forthcoming in the proceedings of the Hungarian Tolkien Society’s Budapest 2012 conference....more

DOES ANYONE REALIZE HOW CLOSE WE WERE TO LOSING TOLKIEN?!?!?? Can you imagine a world without his Hobbits, his elves, his orcs? The man is a genius, not just a literary genius, but an absolute linguistic pedant. I finished this book simply fascinated and now I want to learn Norse, Welsh, Latin, and Greek. Not only have I gained a better understanding of the warfront during WWI, but I also appreciate the gifts Tolkien gave to us more than ever. I will cherish this book. A perfect audio read becauDOES ANYONE REALIZE HOW CLOSE WE WERE TO LOSING TOLKIEN?!?!?? Can you imagine a world without his Hobbits, his elves, his orcs? The man is a genius, not just a literary genius, but an absolute linguistic pedant. I finished this book simply fascinated and now I want to learn Norse, Welsh, Latin, and Greek. Not only have I gained a better understanding of the warfront during WWI, but I also appreciate the gifts Tolkien gave to us more than ever. I will cherish this book. A perfect audio read because all of the foreign and Tolkien vocabulary is pronounced correctly. ...more

This book was something quite different from what I expected. Going in I expected a book focused on J.R.R. Tolkien almost exclusively, with discussions of the hells of the Western Front in WWI and then a deeper discussion of the themes of loss or nature and industrialization play out in The Lord of the Rings. I was looking forward to that analysis of the 'coming of the machine age' that Peter Jackson had played up so beautifully in the movie version of The Two Towers.

Instead, Garth treats us toThis book was something quite different from what I expected. Going in I expected a book focused on J.R.R. Tolkien almost exclusively, with discussions of the hells of the Western Front in WWI and then a deeper discussion of the themes of loss or nature and industrialization play out in The Lord of the Rings. I was looking forward to that analysis of the 'coming of the machine age' that Peter Jackson had played up so beautifully in the movie version of The Two Towers.

Instead, Garth treats us to a view into a group of Victorian friends with discursions on the philological and poetic world/myth building that Tolkien was working on at the time. The group of friends are the four self-appointed members of the 'Tea Club and Barrovian Society" (shortened to TCBS for most purposes). The grand name concealed what was no more than a high-school clique. I'm reminded of my own high-school poseur-gang dubbed "the D-Men" although in practice, the TCBS was closer to Tufts University's Film Series club.

Each of the four members of the TCBS saw themselves and the group as having the potential to change the world and bring forth works of immortal quality. Garth asserts that the TCBS was purely middle-class, but there is a strong strain of upper-class Victorian exceptionalism in Tolkien's peers views of their world. After being split apart to attend Cambridge and Oxford, the four friends still exchanged letters, poems, writings, and music and periodically met in what were referred to as ‘Councils.’

It’s all very idyllic and the reader can’t quite say whether these young men were destined to be the next Algonquin Round Table or just a group of high-school alumni pen-pals. And then Tolkien’s generation of young academics was swept-up in the Great War. Three of the four TCBS members were young officers leading patrols and assaults in the Battle of the Somme, the fourth was on a battlecruiser in the Battle of Jutland. Only one of the three sent to France came back. Tolkien was infected with lice-borne “trench-fever” and spent second half of the war on home guard duty and medical convalescence.

Garth makes a good argument for the power of Tolkien’s experience in the Somme for shaping much of his mythic background for Middle-Earth, particularly the stories that went into his Book of Lost Tales and The Silmarillion. I was pleasantly surprised to learn of the conceptual links between Tolkien’s mythology and books of H. Rider Haggard.

In the long Postscript, Garth makes an effort to place the writings of Tolkien in a literary universe defined by post-Great War writing. He makes a case that Tolkien was writing about his wartime experience without falling into the two major camps of war-writing of the period. Tales of Middle-Earth are neither the ‘high diction’ propaganda created by imperial powers in the image of Haggard and [William Morris} to impress their people and drive in recruits nor the studied, modernist, or gritty writings of [author: Robert Graves] or Sigfried Sassoon. Instead, Tolkien sought to create a new style. In the process, he created a whole new genre of popular literature....more

I actually really enjoyed this book. Other books about Tolkien seem to skip over the time he spent in WWI. They talk briefly about it and then move on. This book was based all around the time he spent in the army and it's effect on his writing. It seemed very logical for his war experiences to be portrayed in his writing some way, so I agree with the author. Also I was happy that they went not only into detail about Tolkien's war experience, but also Rob Gilson's, G.B. Smith's and Christopher WiI actually really enjoyed this book. Other books about Tolkien seem to skip over the time he spent in WWI. They talk briefly about it and then move on. This book was based all around the time he spent in the army and it's effect on his writing. It seemed very logical for his war experiences to be portrayed in his writing some way, so I agree with the author. Also I was happy that they went not only into detail about Tolkien's war experience, but also Rob Gilson's, G.B. Smith's and Christopher Wiseman. They did talk about JRR grief at the death of Rob Gilson. But I was disappointed that they didn't go into his grief over G.B. Smith's death, since I know he had a closer relationship with GBS then he did RG.It was really cool, to see the timeline of what he wrote, during what. And how he revised it. It was an enjoyable read, I recommend it. ...more

One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918, all but one of my close friends were dead.— J.R.R. Tolkien, forward to The Lord of the Rings

World War I represented everything Tolkien hated: the destruction of nature, the deadly application of technology, the abuse and corruptOne has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918, all but one of my close friends were dead.— J.R.R. Tolkien, forward to The Lord of the Rings

World War I represented everything Tolkien hated: the destruction of nature, the deadly application of technology, the abuse and corruption of authority, and the triumph of industrialization. It interrupted his career, separated him from his wife, and damaged his health. Yet at the same time it gave him an appreciation for the virtues of ordinary people, for friendships, and for what beauty he could find amidst ugliness. "They lie in all the pools, pale faces, deep deep under the dark water. I saw them: grim faces and evil, noble faces and sad. Many faces proud and fair, with weeds in their silver hair. But all foul, all rotting, all dead."- "The Passage of the Marshes", The Two TowersThe dead lying in pools of mud is a powerful image of trench warfare on the Western Front, and is something that Tolkien would have undoubtedly seen during his wartime service. As the autumn rains fell, the battlefield of the Somme turned into a stinking mire seeded with the rotting corpses of men and animals. The dead men that Frodo and Sam see are not physically present – only their ghostly shapes have been preserved –but their forms inspire horror and pity.

We are all shaped by the world in which we live.

(I used this volume for a presentation on Tolkien and The Great War. I found it very useful and insightful into Tolkien the man and the "Lost Generation")

I read Tolkien and the Great War as part of a group read with the Tolkien group on Goodreads, and I'm so glad I did. I've read a lot of books about Tolkien, and this is one of the very best. Garth delves into the biographical details of Tolkien's youth and young adulthood, looking especially at Tolkien's friendship with three other schoolmates: G. B. Smith, Rob Gilson, and Christopher Wiseman. Together, these four formed the Tea Club and Barrovian Society (TCBS), a brotherhood dedicated to rekinI read Tolkien and the Great War as part of a group read with the Tolkien group on Goodreads, and I'm so glad I did. I've read a lot of books about Tolkien, and this is one of the very best. Garth delves into the biographical details of Tolkien's youth and young adulthood, looking especially at Tolkien's friendship with three other schoolmates: G. B. Smith, Rob Gilson, and Christopher Wiseman. Together, these four formed the Tea Club and Barrovian Society (TCBS), a brotherhood dedicated to rekindling the enchantment of the world through their creative output (especially prose and poetry). The TCBS began as a group for conversation and clever pranks, but as these four men grew up together the TCBS became a refuge, a place of hope in the midst of a world at war. All four members eventually enlisted and served in the Great War, and as the grueling tedium and horror of trench warfare (and naval warfare, in Wiseman's case) took their toll, the men's letters to one another display a poignant yearning for even a brief time togehter, that the hope of the TCBS might enable them to endure through the war and dream of a better world after.

Gilson and Smith died in the war, which effectively ended the TCBS. Wiseman became a school headmaster, and Tolkien . . . well, of course we know what he did after the war. This story is significant because it was during these years that Tolkien began creating the Elvish languages and the history that goes with them. The encouragement of the other TCBS members helped give Tolkien the motivation to pursue his poetry and prose, and the dreams he shared with the TCBS--that beauty in writing might re-enchant the world, opening people's eyes to the "faerie" all around us--obviously resonated within him for the rest of his life.

John Garth's telling of this story is even and well reasoned. He presents the details as he has put them together, drawing from letters, wartime documents, other literature of the time, and other scholarship on Tolkien. There is surely a temptation for the biographer to make many presumptions, drawing connections between Tolkien's life experiences and his writings, and much of this would seem reasonable. However, Garth generally restricts himself to simply presenting the facts, and the book is stronger because of this. Throughout the book, he suggests that Tolkien's experiences may possibly be visible here and there in his fiction, only rarely in an obvious or direct way, but he respects Tolkien's own disdain for bringing the author's biography into his works.

For me the most fascinating parts of Tolkien and the Great War are Garth's Epilogue and Postscript, which are really distinct essays considering Tolkien's work as a whole, from a critical standpoint. Garth shares some wonderful insights into Middle-Earth: for example, the interesting parallel between Melkor's destruction of the Two Trees, using the shadowy cover of Ungoliant, and Beren's theft of the Silmaril, using the shadowy cover of Luthien's enchantment. How many times have I read The Silmarillion and yet not made that connection! Probably the greatest part of Garth's book is the Postscript, in which he defends Tolkien's writing against the attacks of critics, showing how Tolkien's archaic, seemingly backward-looking epic-creating is every bit as valid and appropriate a response to World War I as the trench memoir and poetry of disillusionment and disenchantment. Garth proposes that the literature of disillusionment in the decade following the war in many ways hijacked the actual feelings of the returning soldiers, giving the war in hindsight an emotional color that might not be entirely accurate. Tolkien, in contrast, created a literature that acknowledges the horrors and confusion, while still affirming that every act of heroism and bravery is valuable in itself, regardless whether the ultimate outcome seems to make any sense. The Beren/Luthien and Turin stories act as pictures of two ends of a spectrum of understanding war. In the story of Beren and Luthien, heroism and bravery result in victory, as well as the maturity of the heroic characters (though even in that story, the ending is tainted by the evils of war, greed, and selfishness). In Turin's story, the hero is ennobled through his dogged pursuit of justice and righteousness, even though he is also often rash and his decisions are fated to go awry to the very end; but the confusion and darkness that results from the hero's actions don't make his actions the less noble.

Garth's Postscript ought to be required reading for any Tolkien fan, and I highly recommend the whole book especially for readers who have spent some time with The Book of Lost Tales, the History of Middle-Earth series, or even just The Silmarillion. Tolkien and the Great War is simply a fantastic Tolkien book....more

A good book, but not one that flowed particularly well (at least for me). I'll be honest: I find Tolkien's writing to be difficult at times, and this book felt like it was written by Tolkien's literary brother. I read the book in fits and starts because it often felt like I was reading a textbook.Despite this, I enjoyed the book thoroughly. I found it to be a thorough and informative look at Tolkien and the experiences that molded him and his mythology. And for history buffs, it offered a glimpsA good book, but not one that flowed particularly well (at least for me). I'll be honest: I find Tolkien's writing to be difficult at times, and this book felt like it was written by Tolkien's literary brother. I read the book in fits and starts because it often felt like I was reading a textbook.Despite this, I enjoyed the book thoroughly. I found it to be a thorough and informative look at Tolkien and the experiences that molded him and his mythology. And for history buffs, it offered a glimpse into England's past from a perspective not likely to be found elsewhere.Definitely worth the read, but don't expect to blast through it....more

I really found this book very interesting. He ties events going on in the war and his friendships to themes and ideas being developed in Tolkien's imaginative world. There are some really powerful ideas to think about.

This is an intensely poignant book of two genres: English fiction literature of the first half of the twentieth century (including J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Silmarillon”); and World War 1 non-fiction. On the back cover A.N. Wilson is quoted: “I have rarely read a book which so intelligently graphed the relation between a writer’s inner life and his outward circumstances”. That nails it; and a very unusual fascinating combination it makes, too.

We are often told that war maThis is an intensely poignant book of two genres: English fiction literature of the first half of the twentieth century (including J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Silmarillon”); and World War 1 non-fiction. On the back cover A.N. Wilson is quoted: “I have rarely read a book which so intelligently graphed the relation between a writer’s inner life and his outward circumstances”. That nails it; and a very unusual fascinating combination it makes, too.

We are often told that war makes men of boys; or that no good comes of fighting. How very, very different the world today might have been had circumstances of family, school and the development of such effective means of mechanical mass killing not unexpectedly proved quite so favourable for Tolkien’s etymological development of his creations of literary genius? From the Word came Myth. C.S. Lewis’ Christian allegories are not difficult to identify; whilst J.R.R. Tolkien’s instead embed the Christian faith in Middle Earth sufficiently deeply so as only to be discovered by those who read with eyes wide open, and an alert mind.

How many young children invent ‘secret’ imaginary words? Very many, I suspect, listening in to playtime at nursery school. But how many, like the young Tolkien go on further, to invent a new lexicon entirely of words that though new are not unrelated to known ancient or reconstructed words; before diligently inventing a new grammar, devising and enforcing formal rules of that invented grammar, and finally creating a new and unique fictional mythology? Vanishingly few, I expect.

So it was that I learned of the honour and close bond between four school friends growing up in Birmingham, members of the self-appointed Tea Club & Barrovian Society; and thence, as the pages turned, of the later utter, bleak despair in the horror of the taking of young lives by means of the rise of appallingly efficient new methods of killing by machine. Four lives in so very, very many, separated forever on this earth by (in one way or another) the Battle of the Somme, within a uniquely dreadful War.

Garth doesn’t dwell on or wallow in doom and gloom; he maintains a clear headed neutrality of fact and description; giving the mind of his reader the freedom to fully occupy the scene. Occasionally Garth makes welcome observations which distract from welling distress and the pooling of horrors. I learned of the Royal Defence Corps, founded in 1916 for the same reasons as would later be found needful in the Second World War (The Home Guard). I was surprised to also learn of a popular name for a cat, Tibert/Tybalt, derived from the tom cat in the medieval Reynard the Fox. ‘Tibbles’, or “ ‘Tibby’, … “SUPPER”; a wail I’ve often heard cried of a Summer’s evening; when I’ve wondered from whence such an odd name could have been derived!

Tolkien (a Roman Catholic) argued that “There is nonetheless a case for it: a form of language familiar in meaning and yet freed from trivial associations, and filled with the memory of good and evil, is an achievement, and it’s possessors are richer than those who have no such tradition.” (p.291). If only the Church of England would heed such words, look at the extraordinary and now long term popularity of Tolkien’s Middle Earth, and give up its utterly embarrassing attempts to modernise the language of Anglicanism!

Nothing is new under the sun. Garth in his postscript argues valuably and forcefully against the late 1920s revisionist approach of a mass waste of life. He illuminates Tolkien’s outlook in moving beyond the very disaster or discovery which should naturally be expected to light the fuse of extinguishing all hope; to an unexpected event, a change for the better which grows, widens, and leads to a confidence to dare for hope and redemption. For the last few years I have dreaded the thought that 2014 will turn into a 365 day long anniversary of the weeping and wailing of the ‘waste’ of it all. This book has reminded me of what is Good, and has girded me with Hope.

[P.S., see also Quote, “Literature shrivels in a universal language…” (J.R.R. Tolkein).]...more

http://nhw.livejournal.com/325040.html[return][return]This book carries a recommendation by A.N. Wilson to the effect that it's "the best book about Tolkien that has yet been written". While I don't think it is actually better than Tom Shippey's work, it is none the less a very good book, moving well beyond the cliches of equating the Dead Marshes to the Somme. It basically concentrates on the story of the friendship between Tolkien and three of his schoolmates, G.B. Smith, Rob Gilson and Christhttp://nhw.livejournal.com/325040.html[return][return]This book carries a recommendation by A.N. Wilson to the effect that it's "the best book about Tolkien that has yet been written". While I don't think it is actually better than Tom Shippey's work, it is none the less a very good book, moving well beyond the cliches of equating the Dead Marshes to the Somme. It basically concentrates on the story of the friendship between Tolkien and three of his schoolmates, G.B. Smith, Rob Gilson and Christopher Wiseman, who together formed an intimate group called the TCBS. It could have been the story of any group of naive and idealistic young men, pledged to change the world and to renew a sense of old values through their works of literature, except of course that one of them actually did.[return][return]Garth saves his analysis of the effect of the war per se on Tolkien's writing for an afterword, and concentrates for most of the book on the narrative of what actually happened to the four friends. This is very effective. The actual events of the Somme are dealt with surprisingly quickly, but Garth manages to balance a detailed account of where Smith, Gilson and Tolkien were (Wiseman was in the Navy) with a sense of the overall perspective of the agonising shifts in the 1916 front line. (This may be what A.N. Wilson was getting at - I haven't read much else about the first world war, but I find it difficult to believe that there are many other accounts of it that are as lucid as this.)[return][return]Of course, the effects of the Somme were devastating. Gilson and Smith were both killed, and Tolkien invalided home with trench fever; he never returned to the front line, fortunately. And it's fairly obvious that the deep friendship between Tolkien and Wiseman was fatally undermined by their war experiences. Garth makes a persuasive argument for the deep impact of the TCBS on Tolkien's writing. I would like to know more about the effect of Tolkien's relationship with his wife Edith, who he was courting and marrying at this time, on his writing. Perhaps there is little to say, or to be discovered.[return][return]There are two lengthy postscripts to the main narrative. The first looks at the relationship between what Tolkien was actually writing during the Great War and his eventually published work (two decades later for The Hobbit, four decades later for The Lord of the Rings). The second ranges freely across the whole spectrum of English literature in the twentieth century, pointing out that Tolkien describes both the heroism and the horror of war (where Owen and Sassoon concentrate on the horror, to the point of concealing what they themselves were up to), and concluding with a favourable review from C.S. Lewis about the realism of Tolkien's portrayal of the psychology of wartime.[return][return]There's lots more here. Recommended....more

This book is not what I really expected. I thought I was going to read War Stories of J.R.R. Tolkien and how that became a factor in shaping Middle-Earth. It was more of a combination of Literary History, Military History and Biography, focusing more on Literary.

This book is not what I really expected. I thought I was going to read War Stories of J.R.R. Tolkien and how that became a factor in shaping Middle-Earth. It was more of a combination of Literary History, Military History and Biography, focusing more on Literary.

Literary History:John Garth explains the pieces of literature that influenced Tolkien's Middle Earth. Tolkien was more inclined to Germanic, Norse and Celtic literature and he was inspired by it. In some perspectives, the Germans, the Norsemen and the Celts are deemed to be 'barbaric' but some would say they have a rich culture, notably literature.

Military History:Tolkien's Generation was called "The Lost Generation" because half of this generation lost their lives fighting World War One or in other names "The Great War" or "The War to End All Wars". Here, it tells the story of 2nd Lt. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien in this time of conflict. He was a signals man tasked with communications. There was little action told and not much of it. It was mostly how Tolkien did his duty when his country asked him to defend it.

Biography:Not much of a biography. It talked about Tolkien's Early Age, his educational background, his military service, and some parts of his latter life.It didn't speak of much specifics but it did detail some parts of his life.

This book is a bit boring if you don't understand some references. But for me, this was academical and analytical. I learned about Tolkien's state of mind (sort of) and how the world's beloved Middle Earth writer came to be. It wasn't entirely focused on Tolkien. It talked about his companions and how he developed languages (for his legendarium) and analyzed stories(later inspired by it) and later the creator of Middle-Earth ...more

I was inspired to read this book after hearing John Garth speak at the National WWI Museum about how the Somme Battle affected Tolkien's writing. The discussion opened my eyes to how my own experiences of war have shaped my own writing, and I hoped for more insights. It took a while, but this book ultimately delivered.

The author takes us through Tolkien's life, exploring in great detail his relationship with his three friends of the "TCBS." I felt at times this discussion dragged on and chased aI was inspired to read this book after hearing John Garth speak at the National WWI Museum about how the Somme Battle affected Tolkien's writing. The discussion opened my eyes to how my own experiences of war have shaped my own writing, and I hoped for more insights. It took a while, but this book ultimately delivered.

The author takes us through Tolkien's life, exploring in great detail his relationship with his three friends of the "TCBS." I felt at times this discussion dragged on and chased a few tangents. Inexplicably there is little exploration of Tolkien's immediate reaction to the loss of two of his dearest friends in battle.

Fortunately I was patient. In the final section we see how The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings use the mythological epic format to explore the great evils of the Early Twentieth Century as Tolkien saw them: despair, dehumanizations, and the mechanization of death.

For myself, I found in Tolkien a kindred spirit: a soldier who has felt the exhilaration and horror, logic and insanity, hope and despair, courage and cowardice, and vitality and desolation of combat. I now see the Great War in the Desolation of Smaug or a fallen elf; in my own writing you may gaze upon Revolutionary America and catch a glimpse of Iraq or Afghanistan.

Thank you, John Garth, for opening my eyes to both Tolkien and my own reflection....more

Even if you're not a fan of Tolkien, this is a facinating biography of Edwardian England. The biography follows Tolkien and his three best friends, all incredibly talented and literate in a way that only this generation really was, having met at public school at the height of Britain's classical public school system. The biography charts the origins of both his fiction and his scholarship (Tolkien held one of the most prestigious chairs at Oxford and his scholarship on medieval language is stillEven if you're not a fan of Tolkien, this is a facinating biography of Edwardian England. The biography follows Tolkien and his three best friends, all incredibly talented and literate in a way that only this generation really was, having met at public school at the height of Britain's classical public school system. The biography charts the origins of both his fiction and his scholarship (Tolkien held one of the most prestigious chairs at Oxford and his scholarship on medieval language is still read by graduate students) but it is also an incredibly touching portrait of four friends and the suffering that was inflicted on men of a certain historical moment by one of history's most senseless wars. This biography will give you a very good sense of both this man and this moment as well as giving you a new angle from which to see his fiction. I am not usually an avid reader of biography, but I couldn't put this down. ...more

This is probably the only book I will ever be able to classify as both 'military' and 'non-military' history. It's true, WWI is discussed often, including in the book's title, but it's really just a framing device to tell the story of the beginning of JRR Tolkien's writing. It worked really well. The book was good; I love the poems that were included. I knew Tolkien was a poet, but I'd never made any effort to read any of them outside of LOTR; I may have to go pick up a poetry book now. I was exThis is probably the only book I will ever be able to classify as both 'military' and 'non-military' history. It's true, WWI is discussed often, including in the book's title, but it's really just a framing device to tell the story of the beginning of JRR Tolkien's writing. It worked really well. The book was good; I love the poems that were included. I knew Tolkien was a poet, but I'd never made any effort to read any of them outside of LOTR; I may have to go pick up a poetry book now. I was expecting and would have liked a little more emphasis on how this time in his life influenced the story for which he is most famous. I think an argument can be made that the four hobbits and the four friends share characteristics, and that some of the events he witnessed made their way into the books. Overall, though, this was a really interesting take on a biography. ...more

Wow. When this first came out, I had no interest in reading it. I thought it would be very dry and not all that relevant. Boy, was I wrong!

After reading this, I feel I have a much greater understanding of Tolkien and his works and interests. I knew, of course, that he had fought in WWI and that it had a profound impact on his life (losing most of his friends) and viewpoint. I was not aware that it was during this time that he was doing a great deal of work developing his original languages, QuenWow. When this first came out, I had no interest in reading it. I thought it would be very dry and not all that relevant. Boy, was I wrong!

After reading this, I feel I have a much greater understanding of Tolkien and his works and interests. I knew, of course, that he had fought in WWI and that it had a profound impact on his life (losing most of his friends) and viewpoint. I was not aware that it was during this time that he was doing a great deal of work developing his original languages, Quenya and Sindarin, not to mention his myths which form the background of Middle-Earth.

It's been many years since I read _The Silmarillion_ and I've only read bits and pieces of the other posthumous works, so I was pleased by how readable this book was to a non-scholar....more

This is simply the best biographical work on Tolkien I've read yet. It sheds more light on his relationships with the members of the 'TCBS', details what he would have seen during his Great War service, and effectively puts all of his early writings into a evocative chronological context. John Garth makes convincing arguments for how Tolkien's Great War experiences and friendships shaped his writing, and for how his writing should be understood relative to his contemporaries. This book illuminatThis is simply the best biographical work on Tolkien I've read yet. It sheds more light on his relationships with the members of the 'TCBS', details what he would have seen during his Great War service, and effectively puts all of his early writings into a evocative chronological context. John Garth makes convincing arguments for how Tolkien's Great War experiences and friendships shaped his writing, and for how his writing should be understood relative to his contemporaries. This book illuminates the development of Tolkien's writing as a whole, and really should be required reading before anyone begins the Book of Lost Tales material....more

I guess I'm not a big World War I fan, some of the history information bored me. But I really enjoyed learning about the bond between Tolkien and his closest friends at the time he began writing his mythology. The Inklings are the group who history would remember but it was the TCSB that sparked the imagination which Tolkien would use. These friendships were embedded in his life forever and they were in some ways the strongest. John Garth does an excellent job of weaving Tolkien's personal, schoI guess I'm not a big World War I fan, some of the history information bored me. But I really enjoyed learning about the bond between Tolkien and his closest friends at the time he began writing his mythology. The Inklings are the group who history would remember but it was the TCSB that sparked the imagination which Tolkien would use. These friendships were embedded in his life forever and they were in some ways the strongest. John Garth does an excellent job of weaving Tolkien's personal, scholarly, and military lives together. It made me appreciate Tolkien's work even more than I already did....more

This was definitely worth reading. Garth doesn't spend a lot of time connecting the dots between Tolkien's WWI experience and his mythology, other than to discuss how the major themes of his mythology were influenced by the events of the war. He does get into a few of those discussions, but he mostly just describes the war experiences, outlines possible influence and lets you draw your own more specific conclusions. For this reason, it is probably better to read this book when you already have aThis was definitely worth reading. Garth doesn't spend a lot of time connecting the dots between Tolkien's WWI experience and his mythology, other than to discuss how the major themes of his mythology were influenced by the events of the war. He does get into a few of those discussions, but he mostly just describes the war experiences, outlines possible influence and lets you draw your own more specific conclusions. For this reason, it is probably better to read this book when you already have a pretty solid background in the legendarium....more

An excellent work that is the result of years of research on the author's part. Tolkien's life during WWI is depicted perhaps as accurately as possible. Garth delves deeply into Tolkien's life and mind in an attempt to understand the incredible man whose imagination fathered Middle Earth. If you are an avid Tolkien fan who desires to know the man whose books are permanently etched in history among the greats, this is a good place to start.

I finished this Tuesday and since I have to take it back to the library on Friday, I will have a real review by then.

To tide you over till that happy day - This is a well-written, fascinating look at a particular moment in Tolkien's life that deepened my understanding of Tolkien's work and made me appreciate them even more.

John Garth’sTolkien and the Great War:The Threshold of Middle-earthPreviously Published in Issue 10, Spring 2004, Journal of the Northeast Tolkien Society

Seeing John Garth’s new biography of J. R. R. Tolkien shelved next to many great books on the subject, a prospective reader wonders what Garth could add to the wealth of information. The question evaporates rapidly; reading Tolkien and the Great War is like slipping over a precipice of the Emyn Muil and free-falling into muddy march next to BatJohn Garth’sTolkien and the Great War:The Threshold of Middle-earthPreviously Published in Issue 10, Spring 2004, Journal of the Northeast Tolkien Society

Seeing John Garth’s new biography of J. R. R. Tolkien shelved next to many great books on the subject, a prospective reader wonders what Garth could add to the wealth of information. The question evaporates rapidly; reading Tolkien and the Great War is like slipping over a precipice of the Emyn Muil and free-falling into muddy march next to Battalion Signal Officer Tolkien with his closest friends, and then watching as their idealistic dreams and young lives vaporize, disappearing into the shadowy no-man’s land called the Battle of the Somme. J. R. R. Tolkien and his friends, Christopher Wiseman, Rob Gilson, and G. B. Smith, speak often and eloquently in poetry and letters throughout the narration which track their days as intellectual lights at King Edward’s School, and then details their plunge into the World War I abyss. First hand stories from other soldiers and a universe of facts large and small bring Tolkien, his friends, and the surrounding world at war vividly to life. Garth weaves into the account of inspirational fellowship, hope and loss, an absorbing study of J. R. R. Tolkien’s early work and creative development. Art and life fuse as Tolkien’s emerging vision of Middle-earth absorbs the nightmare landscape of the Battle of the Somme.

The interlacing biography of J. R. R. Tolkien and his three greatest young friends begins at King Edward’s School where they formed the Tea Club and Barrovian Society (TCBS): a fellowship based on passionate idealism, creativity and youthful high-jinks. Through mutual inspiration, the society imagined they would reach their fullest artistic potential. They hoped to “kindle a new light” (Garth, 180) in the world, and “re-establish…the love of real and true beauty in everyone’s breast” (Garth, 105) through the influence of their creations. Meanwhile, at King Edward’s they led their classmates and triumphed over their enemies--cynicism, sarcastic irony and decadence. Typically, they indulged in sophisticated word-play, staged debates in Latin and performed Aristophanes in classical Greek.

Garth’s narrative never hurries through the awkward and searching passage of youth. He uses Tolkien’s 1911 poem, “The Battle of the Eastern Field” (a parody of heroic epic style in the form of a glorified soccer match), to illustrate the Edwardians’ impression that sports were a showcase for imaginary combat and war was a sport that could be civil. War, as Rob Gilson proposed, “was not…of the first importance, and…was a scientific contest of calculation rather than of personal prowess” (Garth, 146). From an accumulation of detail it is possible to recognize the enthusiasm and idealistic naïveté of youth and take these young men to heart, investing in their futures. The portrait of their innocence greatly magnifies one’s perception of the tragedy that follows their brief studies at Oxford and Cambridge colleges.

While World War I lurks in the shadowy future, Garth spins the memoir of four intersecting lives together with a highly focused account of J. R. R. Tolkien’s education and creative development. Tolkien’s enviable linguistic education (beginning with standard translation of Latin and Greek poetry into English, extending to include Welsh, Old English, Gothic, Old Norse and Finnish and ending with a profound grasp of comparative linguistic history or philology) explains in part why his work remains unique. Tolkien remarked, “If the main mass of education takes linguistic form, creation will take linguistic form” (Garth, 17). Unfortunately, a later-day writer lacking such a linguistic education may never match Tolkien’s virtuosity in using the English language.Furthermore, one can hardly doubt Tolkien’s claim that he wrote his legends to support his invented languages after reading this biography. Garth cites repeated examples illustrating Tolkien’s philological method which involved working back from mysterious ancient words to infer meanings and then grounding them on reasonably imagined legends. He worked, for instance, from the name Eärendel, to “The Voyage of Eärendel the Evening Star”, to the legendary character in his mythology. On the other hand, Garth looks back frequently to Tolkien’s Quenya lexicon for clues to understanding his mythology. Looking for the meaning of Illùvatar’s “Secret Fire” that animates creation in “The Music of the Ainur”, for example, he finds that the Quenya word “Sā” means fire but is also the mystic name of the Holy Ghost. Finally, a sound shift Tolkien manufactured between Quenya and his later invented Goldogrin demanded an explanation, so he built philologically reasonable legends to support the language. In the end though, all of the legends lead back to war and “unnumbered tears” (Garth, 241).

Returning to John Garth’s interlacing chronicle of J. R. R. Tolkien and his three friends who were braving the ordeals of world war, one often finds echoes of The Lord of the Rings. As Tolkien did in his epic, Garth takes pains to indicate the relative positions of the TCBS and the time (sometimes down to the minute) of their struggles in the Battle of the Somme. He describes the approach to enemy strongholds and the landscape surrounding scenes of action as if he had been there. In addition, people who have poured intermittently over maps of Middle-earth while reading The Lord of the Rings may experience déjà vu studying Garth’s maps of the Battle of the Somme. They show the contours of the Western Front on the Somme along with the location of trenches and German strongholds, paths of marches, and important dates with the locations of the TCBS.

Adding first hand accounts from other soldiers, Garth puts a reader directly into the surreal landscape of battle. He quotes Edmund Blunden who describes the “ghastly gallows-trees” (Garth, 186) of Thiepval Wood where J. R. R. Tolkien spent time in a dugout between August 24 and August 26, 1916. Another soldier, Charles Douie adds, “The wood was never silent, for shell and rifle fire echoed endlessly through the trees…At night the flares, as they rose and fell, threw the wood into deeper shadow and made it yet more dark and menacing.” Such traumatized impressions of dark and light could certainly have fed Tolkien’s fascination with shadow and various manifestations of light in his mythology. The image of blinding light shining through a mesh of gallows-trees would not be alien to Middle-earth.

Moreover, Tolkien’s memory of “endless marching, always on foot” and the fact that he had gathered his belongings to move forty-five times between June 27 and October 24, 1916 reminds one of the heroes’ journey in The Lord of the Rings. Like Tolkien’s literary heroes, the marching TCBS were always mindful of mortality and their still unfulfilled mission to bring a new light into the world. In a passage reminiscent of Frodo handing the Red Book of Westmarch over to Sam, the aspiring poet G. B. Smith wrote to Tolkien: “may you say the things I have tried to say long after I am not there to say them, if such be my lot.” As Garth’s biography reveals, J. R. R. Tolkien took to heart the mission his friends assigned him by building his visionary poetry into a mythology of light and then weaving the mythology into his heroic epic of good and evil.

Garth dares to give each of J. R. R. Tolkien’s early poems careful consideration and room to breathe as they emerge from the timeline of the biographical narrative. This gift of time and space allows one the rare pleasure of contemplating Tolkien’s nascent luminous mystic landscape in microcosmic form. Slipping across the border from the darker wartime narrative, a reader may stand momentarily transfixed in the transcendent setting of Kôr with its “sable hill, gigantic…gazing out across an azure sea / Under an azure sky…marble temples white…dazzling halls…tawny shadows [and] massy trees rock-rooted in the shade”. This sublime world in miniature would evolve into “white shores and…a far green country under a swift sunrise”: Frodo’s first perception of the Undying Lands at the conclusion of The Lord of the Rings.Tolkien’s visionary poetic landscape keeps reappearing suspended in Garth’s narrative at mantra-like intervals. These distillations of color and light remind the reader repeatedly of what is sacred and eternal in humanity, thereby illuminating the surrounding mournful account of crushed dreams and muddy dismembered bodies with unbearable poignancy. Vistas symbolic of a soul’s longing for eternal beauty, they hover distressingly near to scenes of “the lost of the Somme”: the remains of 20,000 British victims of machine gun and shell fire felled on July 1, 1916 and still “lying around” after three weeks in a “forest of barbed wire…thick with bodies, their faces purple-black.” The tension between these two landscapes of war and transcendence intensifies the impact of both on the reader.

As war approaches and for the duration of Tolkien’s active service on the murderous Somme, Garth portrays him as dwelling on the intersecting borders of these two landscapes. Tolkien’s poetic landscape seems to shimmer and tremble like a perfect tear on the verge while the distorted Somme landscape and a disillusioned world appear to press in on all sides. However, an entire legendarium lay encoded at the still center of Tolkien’s mystical landscape. With the ending of his active duty on the Somme, Tolkien wrote the pivotal prose narration of “The Fall of Gondolin.” Garth’s analysis of this work creates a powerful image of Tolkien’s poetically encoded seed “quickening” to send radiating green roots and shoots snaking through the colorless, chaotic landscape of the Somme and bringing a timeless perspective to the universal experience of conflict and suffering.

To annihilate Gondolin, the Elvish haven and monument to the memory of unstained paradise, Tolkien’s most powerful fallen angel, Melko, manufactures iron dragons. According to Garth, these creatures “violate the boundary between mythical monster and machine, between magic and technology.” Tolkien describes them as moving on “iron so cunningly linked that they might flow…around and above all obstacles before them”. Garth quotes a German account of a British tank on the Somme that likens it to a “monster,” an “iron caterpillar” driven by a “supernatural force,” and the “devil’s chariot.” The devastating battle in Gondolin between the Elves and Melko’s iron dragons certainly evokes some aspects of World War I: a lethal war of men against machines. Garth’s study of “The Fall of Gondolin” also includes a striking insight into the use of fantasy as it exaggerates the state of humanity and therefore may warn about radical forms of human behavior such as totalitarianism. This is just one of many interesting observations Garth makes about J. R. R. Tolkien’s work.

As with the poetry, the focus of this biography on a short span of years allows John Garth the luxury of reflecting at length on Tolkien’s prose inventions individually as they arrive in the narrative of time. Tolkien’s creation myth, “The Music of the Ainur” is, according to Garth, an effort to find an unexpected blessing attached to the fact that God’s creation is tragically flawed. Garth introduces the Valar (Tolkien’s unfallen angels), explains their mission as guardians of the created world, and notes that Melko arrives in that world before them. Continuing, Garth makes the incandescent statement that Melko’s “ensuing conflict with the Valar makes a whole history out of the biblical declaration, ‘Let there be light’.” He goes on to illustrate the point. There are also comparisons to Milton and The Bible in Garth’s discussion of the “fall” as it occurs in Tolkien’s The Book of Lost Tales, and the reader will find many other thought provoking ideas in Garth’s analysis of Tolkien’s cosmic myth.

Turning to Tolkien’s romantic fairy-stories, Garth gives his full and appreciative attention to “The Tale of Tinúviel” and “Turambar and the Foalókë” (treasure-hoarding serpent). There are many interesting facets to Garth’s analysis of these two tales, but his focus on Tolkien’s attitude toward prejudice, mockery and the destructive use of irony is most compelling. Beginning with Tinwelint’s mockery of Beren and Beren’s ultimate answering jest in “The Tale of Tinúviel” and then continuing with the dragon Glorund’s sadistic enjoyment of irony in “Turambar and the Foalókë”, Garth’s discussion pulls the reader into the stories and highlights one of the evils J. R. R. Tolkien wanted to undo in this world.

On a more general level, Garth’s compression of The Book of Lost Tales illuminates shifts in Tolkien’s mythology and the reasoning behind those shifts that may stretch out over two volumes of The History of Middle-earth. His clarifications would be helpful to readers of The Book of Lost Tales who become confused when Eriol living in the Dark Ages becomes Ælfwine possibly living in the eleventh century, and when Tol Eressëa shifts from symbolizing Britain to representing a separate island far west of the British Isles. Garth also makes it easy to follow the devolution of Tolkien’s legendarium from myth, to romantic fairy-stories, to their intersection with Germanic sea-legends at the outer limit of recorded history.

In his postscript, John Garth sets out to demonstrate a connection between Tolkien’s World War I experience and his art--an argument that seems like a forgone conclusion after reading the biographical narrative. What Garth really forges in the postscript is a layered, instructive and convincing case for J. R. R. Tolkien’s legitimate place beside other authors from the history of great literature. He names the writers and describes the two literary styles (modernism, and classic World War I literature of protest and dark unflinchingly focused realism) that dominated post World War I literature. Then he explains the reasons why those authors rejected heroic epic and high diction, and the reasons why Tolkien defied this trend.

Tolkien, like his wizard Gandalf, always had good reason for his choices. Frodo and Sam, on their sacrificial quest in The Lord of the Rings, found a “desolation that lay before Mordor” “more loathsome” than the Dead Marches with their “Many faces proud and fair…all foul, all rotting, all dead.” Called “Noman-lands,” this new hell was a “land defiled, diseased beyond all healing” where the heroes saw themselves as helpless “little squeaking ghosts”. Here Tolkien bears witness to the horrors and the heroic acts of ordinary soldiers he saw in “No Man’s Land,” the desolate expanse of mud where two of his dear friends died tragically with so many others during the Battle of the Somme. Garth points to John Milton and William Blake as Tolkien’s predecessors who, like him, sought to refine the chaotic and tormenting details of their existence into the long perspective of an organizing myth.

In Garth’s biography, Tolkien states that human misunderstanding arises from a “clash of backgrounds” and “It is the tragedy of modern life that no one knows upon what the universe is built to the mind of the man next to him”. Tolkien may have offered a type of bridge between backgrounds with his legendarium. As Joseph Campbell (a master of comparative mythology) explains in his book The Inner reaches of Outer Space, mythological communication conveys “through all its metaphorical imagery…a sense of identity…which unites behind the scenes the opposed actors on the world stage.” This observation points to the relevance of Tolkien’s search for an organizing myth as activities in the theater of twenty-first century living take on global dimensions.

Tolkien’s use of high diction in the context of myth and legend was another choice made with good reason. As Garth’s biography reveals, Tolkien had a deep appreciation for the migration of meaning in language and he understood that language collects attributes such as ‘the memory of good and evil” that are irreplaceable and merit preservation. This was especially true for him in a time when many people denied the existence of absolute evil, seeing it only as a variable symptom of inadequate socialization. According to John Garth, the authors George Orwell, Kurt Vonnegut, William Golding, and Tolkien all turned to fantasy as a means of redefining evil. Tolkien’s evils and Garth’s discussion of them are thought provoking. Those evils include: disenchantment, materialism, the dominance of machines over nature, tyranny and orthodoxy, passive acceptance of defeat, and nihilistic application of the ironic viewpoint to art and life.

In addition, according to Garth’s book, J. R. R. Tolkien perceived that World War I was just a symptom of the great evil, materialism. Joseph Campbell was another thinker who pinpointed “radical materialism [as the force in the nineteenth century that caused] anything like the functional grounding of a social order in a mythology [to disappear] into irrelevance.” In other words, materialism removed the possibility of “opposed actors on the world stage” finding anything in common through the unifying potential of myth. These insights regarding the destructive potential of materialism are important to consider now as the world searches for an antidote to terrorism and the Middle-Eastern War.

Looking back at Tolkien’s catalogue of scourges, one might venture to say that J. R. R. Tolkien and orthodoxy could stand as opposites, and it is interesting to think of a universally accepted ironic viewpoint and modernism as forms of orthodoxy. Tolkien’s statement in Garth’s biography regarding his “instinct…to cloak such self-knowledge as he has, and such criticisms of life as he knows it, under mythical and legendary dress” brings to mind authors such as Gabriel García Márquez who express their opinions of oppressive political regimes by cloaking their meanings in magical-realism. Tolkien’s cloak woven of heroic myth and fairy-story serves well his mission to re-spiritualize creation; it sneaks his message under the radar of almost universal modern-day skepticism. Probably, this is why readers still love his books without fully understanding their reasons and why they might find themselves searching through Beowulf, Elvish lexicons, and all of the literature about Tolkien to understand their fascination and to keep the spell intact.

Now those readers can add John Garth’s biography to the collection of great books about J. R. R. Tolkien and about the Great War. Anyone who has not yet read first hand accounts of the Battle of the Somme will have a poignant revelation reading this book. Readers interested in J. R. R. Tolkien’s work and the forces that influenced his artistic development will have a mind-expanding journey. Those who value J. R. R. Tolkien’s voice and spirit will get much closer to a beloved companion. Multiple readings of Tolkien and the Great War do not diminish its power to move the reader emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. After reading Garth’s book once, or many times, all will find the world taking on elegiac colors that linger and inform stories and news of the world for a long time. The universe of readers owes a debt of gratitude to J. R. R. Tolkien’s family and all the individuals who shared the letters, poems and first hand accounts that animate this story of war, friendship, and the evolution of a singular artistic vision. Along with the tales from J. R. R. Tolkien’s own incomparable pen, this book is a gift to treasure always....more

A very interesting and thorough look on the relationship between the First World War (then known as the Great War, or the War to end all Wars) and the creation of the mythology as well as languages of Middle-Earth. It does start out a bit slow, detailing Tolkien's friendships and schoolyears leasing up to the war, but it later shows why Garth starts there. It's not just the war experiences that spark Tolkien's creativity, rather it provided the final piece of the puzzle alongside his deep love oA very interesting and thorough look on the relationship between the First World War (then known as the Great War, or the War to end all Wars) and the creation of the mythology as well as languages of Middle-Earth. It does start out a bit slow, detailing Tolkien's friendships and schoolyears leasing up to the war, but it later shows why Garth starts there. It's not just the war experiences that spark Tolkien's creativity, rather it provided the final piece of the puzzle alongside his deep love of languages, Mideval myths, his friendships with the TCBS and the need to understand the new world that was left in the wake of the war. I don't think I'll be using this book for my thesis, but I'm not sure because it did provide some interesting and very valid points. ...more

Well written and thorough, this also bogs down into the philology and language building of the world Tolkien created. The best parts were the story of Tolkien and his friends in the war. The book dragged through the initial poetry and building of the language. Only for hardcore philology and Tolkien fans. Otherwise, look elsewhere

“To put the last point another way, writers such as Graves, Sassoon, and Owen saw the Great War as the disease, but Tolkien saw it as merely the symptom.”
—
1 likes

“Tolkien came to regard the tale of Beren and Tinuviel as 'the first example of the motive (to become dominant in Hobbits) that the great policies of world history, "the wheels of the world", are often turned not by the Lords and Governors, even gods, but by the seemingly unknown and weak'. Such a worldview is inherent in the fairy-tale (and Christian) idea of the happy ending in which the dispossessed are restored to joy; but perhaps Tolkien was also struck by the way it had been borne out in the Great War, when ordinary people stepped out of ordinary lives to carry the fate of nations.”
—
0 likes